EDITORIAL: The state budget

If indications earlier this week prove true, New York will soon have a new budget, the third on-time state budget in as many years.

All hail Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

So there was that.

But, as has long been practiced in Albany World, what was announced as a "conceptual framework" for a new budget Wednesday night was produced behind closed doors, this year by four men in a room. That being the case, the details will emerge slowly, even as the Legislature moves quickly to vote, possibly by late Sunday, lest the realities leak to the public before action. If history is any guide, rank-and-file legislators themselves will learn of many of the details of the budget after they vote to approve it.

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Accordingly, it is no easy thing to generalize about the budget agreement. Nonetheless, here are our quick takes on several of the elements as told to reporters earlier this week:

o The budget will increase spending by something less than 2 percent. That continues the admirably restrained increases of the Cuomo era.

o The agreement includes $350 tax rebates next year to families with at least one child and income ranging from $40,000 to $300,000. OK, we get the 2014 part; the governor and all of the legislators will be running election that year. But, still, we're scratching our heads on this one. A single woman, with a kid, making $290,000 needs a tax rebate from a state with a long-term structural deficit? And more so than does a retired couple making $45,000? That's not fuzzy math; that's political math.

o To no one's surprise, the deal extends the tax increase on earners with more than $1 million in annual income. That's worth $2 billion in annual revenue to the state, whose leaders can't quite come to grips with the essential financial issue, which is not the failure to tax millionaires, but that the state just spends too much.

o In education, the budget will increase state aid by nearly $1 billion, or about 5 percent. This gives back to districts with one hand some of what the state has taken with another by imposing a limit on property tax increases. There's no doubt that school districts are feeling considerable budget pain, but at least some of that was self-inflicted with overly generous salaries and benefits.

o Also in education, the budget provides for $15,000 stipends for the best teachers. We don't begrudge additional compensation for star performers -- however they are identified -- but dishing out extra money at a time of increasingly scarce resources misses the point. The basic problem for committed educators in the Hudson Valley is not pay and benefits, which are generous, but program reductions and increasing demands that drain their ability to deliver an education. You want to reward top teachers? Give them smaller and fewer classes and watch what they can do.

Based on what little we see of the budget, it's hard to believe it wouldn't have benefitted from a more open process.